Emerging Technology Standards

Back when I joined on with IBM early in 2001, the company was gearing up its efforts in the emerging space of Web services. Part of this effort was a relatively small package that contained an early SOAP implementation and a handful of demos that was collectively known as the Web Services Toolkit or WSTK.

Over time the WSTK evolved, bundling implementations of key Web services standards, demoing key Web services concepts, etc. Eventually we reached a point where it made sense to expand the scope of technologies that the WSTK covered and so the "Emerging Technologies Toolkit" or ETTK was born.

At that time, the ETTK maintained its focus on Web service technologies but branched out to also explore the areas of Grid and Autonomic Computing. With the launch of the ETTK Portal on alphaWorks last Friday, the scope of the ETTK has broadened yet again to cover an even broader collection of technologies including the Integrated Development Environment for Laszlo.

And even though "the toolkit" is expanding its horizons, it is remaining true to its roots by continuing to serve as the primary vehicle by which IBM ships early preview and demo implementations of key Web services standards such as Web Services Distributed Management, Web Services Resource Framework, Web Services Notification, and so on.

So while the alphaWorks site may change it's appearance and the URL's for where you go and download things may change, the same committment we've had to demonstrating key specifications with code that actually runs remains the same.